On 108th anniversary of Balfour Declaration, Israel stresses historic Jewish rights while Palestinians criticize ‘historic injustice’

Sunday marked the 108th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the announcement of the British government’s decision to endorse “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” 

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar celebrated the anniversary with a post to 𝕏, in which he tagged the current British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. 

“108 years ago today, the Balfour Declaration was signed: in this declaration, the British government recognized the historical right of the Jewish people to build its national home, a right that extended to the entire territory of ‘Mandatory Palestine,’” Sa’ar wrote. 

While not making a further issue of the point, Sa’ar noted that the original Balfour Declaration called for a home for the Jewish people in “the entire territory of ‘Mandatory Palestine,” which at the time included what is today the Kingdom of Jordan. 

“The historic right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and their right to live anywhere in the Land of Israel - the birthplace of the Jewish people - is indisputable,” Sa’ar continued.

“108 years ago, the British government also recognized this right.” 

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon also posted to commemorate the anniversary. 

“In 1917, the Balfour Declaration was signed, recognizing the historic right of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland in the land of Israel,” Danon wrote to 𝕏. “The Land of Israel is – and will always be the eternal homeland of the Jewish people.” 

In 1917, the Balfour Declaration was signed, recognizing the historic right of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland in the land of Israel.

108 years on to this day, that reality hasn’t changed. No propaganda or denialism will change that fact.
The Land of Israel is -…

— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) November 2, 2025

The anniversary did not go unnoticed by Palestinian factions either. The State of Palestine Mission to the UN posted a note to 𝕏, calling for Britain to “recognize, apologize, reparate, and end this historic injustice that befell a colonized, captive, and oppressed people.” 

The post repeated previous claims by Palestinians that the Declaration was a move by a colonizing imperial power. It also attempted to blame Britain for “the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the ongoing Nakba and dispossession of the Palestinian people,” despite the fact that the period immediately after the Balfour Declaration saw a sharp increase in Arab immigration to Mandatory Palestine,  as many Arabs perceived the Declaration to be a sign of imminent development and growth for the desolate territory. 

Let's count the errors peddled by the "State of Palestine."

1. In 1917, no state named Palestine existed. The word denoted an undefined south Levant region that the British Mandate eventually carved out of several Turkish-occupied, predominantly Arab provinces. Without the… https://t.co/JyYMUEE3vy

— Hussain Abdul-Hussain (@hahussain) November 3, 2025

Meanwhile, the Popular Affairs Office in Lebanon of the Hamas terror organization released a statement the same day, saying, “The downfall of the Balfour Declaration and the Israeli entity, which was established as a result of that promise, is inevitable.” 

The terror group also claimed that the Balfour Declaration “prevented the creation of an independent Palestinian state.” Historical records indicate that most Arabs at the time expected to create a pan-Arab entity stretching from Egypt to Syria, seeing the downfall of the Ottoman Turkish rule as the end of Turkish oppression of Arabs. 

Hamas’ statement also appeared to reject any responsibility for the consequences of its Oct. 7 invasion of Israel and the subsequent massacres. 

“The Palestinian people continue to suffer the consequences of that promise, which laid the foundations for the establishment of the terrorist Zionist entity on Palestinian land, prevented the creation of an independent Palestinian state, and plunged the region into ongoing conflict and systematic crimes of extermination against the Palestinian people, as seen most recently in Gaza following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” the statement read. 

The statements by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority’s mission to the UN also failed to recognize that the leaders of the Arab revolt against the Turks, especially Emir Faisal, son of revolt leader Sharif Hussein, approved the Declaration, and in 1919, signed an agreement with Zionist leaders which called to “encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.” 

Faisal signed the agreement “mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab states and Palestine.” 

While the agreement signed between Faisal and the Zionist leaders did not come to fruition, largely due to the British refusal to grant independence to the Arabs, it demonstrated that at least some Arab leaders of the time saw no issue with the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the land that became the State of Israel.